Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1945 - 4.1 Message Types

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### 4.1 Message Types

HTTP messages consist of requests from client to server and responses from server to client.

           HTTP-message   = Simple-Request           ; HTTP/0.9 messages
                          | Simple-Response
                          | Full-Request             ; HTTP/1.0 messages
                          | Full-Response

Full-Request and Full-Response use the generic message format of RFC 822 [7] for transferring entities. Both messages may include optional header fields (also known as "headers") and an entity body. The entity body is separated from the headers by a null line (i.e., a line with nothing preceding the CRLF).

           Full-Request   = Request-Line             ; Section 5.1
                            *( General-Header        ; Section 4.3
                             | Request-Header        ; Section 5.2
                             | Entity-Header )       ; Section 7.1
                            CRLF
                            [ Entity-Body ]          ; Section 7.2

           Full-Response  = Status-Line              ; Section 6.1
                            *( General-Header        ; Section 4.3
                             | Response-Header       ; Section 6.2
                             | Entity-Header )       ; Section 7.1
                            CRLF
                            [ Entity-Body ]          ; Section 7.2

Simple-Request and Simple-Response do not allow the use of any header information and are limited to a single request method (GET).

           Simple-Request  = "GET" SP Request-URI CRLF

           Simple-Response = [ Entity-Body ]

Use of the Simple-Request format is discouraged because it prevents the server from identifying the media type of the returned entity.

Next: 4.2 Message Headers

Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1945 - 4.1 Message Types